


I’ve been watching you

by HikariYumi



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Bruce Banner Feels, Bruce Banner Has Issues, Bruce Banner Needs a Hug, Bruce Banner is a physicist, Depression, Gen, Mentions of Suicide, References to Depression, Suicide Attempt, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony is his assigned FBI agent, anger issues, could be read as pre-slash?, yes that’s the idea, you knwo the meme with a person watching your every movement in the web?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-25
Updated: 2018-04-25
Packaged: 2019-04-27 19:04:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14432124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HikariYumi/pseuds/HikariYumi
Summary: Tony is an FBI agent who’s job it is to observe possible threats. One of those is Bruce Banner and unfortunately he turns out to be quite a worrying case.





	I’ve been watching you

**Author's Note:**

> Hello!
> 
> It’s been quite a bit since my last post which I’m quite sad about. Anyway this idea had been in my head for quite a while, even before this meme with the fbi person watching you became a thing.  
> Anyway, here we go.
> 
> Please mind the tags, there might be only implications and vague descriptions but this work contains the topics of suicide, guilt and depression.
> 
> As always, this thing is not betaed yet, so please excuse weirdly placed comma and grammar. If you want to please point out mistakes to me, I’m happy to correct.
> 
> Have fun  
> ~Hikari

Today was one of these days when Tony actually felt like a person with a healthy sleep circle. He wasn't though, and he wasn't idiotic enough to believe it, but he sure felt like it. Reason for that was once more Robert Bruce Banner, Bruce for his friends to which Tony certainly didn't belong. Not that he cared, he called him Bruce anyway, or Brucey, or one of many other weird nicknames.

It wasn't likely that the man would ever know about this detail anyway, because he wasn't aware of Tony in the first place. No, this wasn't one of those lovey-dovey cases of pining people who thought the other would never notice their existence, Tony was a secret Agent of the FBI.  
His friends couldn't believe it to this day that he actually got recruited, he was a notorious narcissistic-genius-pompous asshole, but unfortunately the best in what he did. 

Some people would call him a hacker, but Tony was way more than a mere cyber criminal. He could programm most of what was needed spontaneously and more often than people cared to admit he helped out in the R&D, Fury couldn't afford to lose an asset like him.  
But for whatever reason, Tony assumed because the bosses wanted him out of their hair, he had been outsourced to shadow suspicious people as well as possible threats.

Bruce Banner was one of them, obviously. The physicist had appeared on the FBI’s radar roughly ten years ago, but they were only keeping a closer eye on him for about two years now.  
But different from the other four people Tony was currently looking after, Bruce was proving actually interesting.

Back when he’d been just fourteen, he had been found building a bomb in the school basement. Not only was it amazing work for a kid, but he didn’t even want to use it against others or something. In the police statement there had been written that Bruce had been merely curious, that it had been a bet if he could do that.  
But Tony knew better. After studying and professionally stalking the man, he was quite sure that this had been a suicide attempt. It wasn’t his first one if you could believe the documents of the social services, but it was certainly the one with the most bang.

For Tony, Bruce was someone he could see as a coworker, a genius without doubt, who was not consumed by pride and dullness. The part about the intelligence hadn’t gone unnoticed by the higher ups either and smart people with Bruce’s background were always dangerous.  
Consequently, Tony’s secret plan was to figure out the physicist and then get him on their side before one of those trigger-happy people could decide to take him out.  
Sure, it wasn’t likely, but in his business, who knew?

A little alert window popped up in the right corner of his screen, indicating that Bruce had switched from his work computer to his personal laptop. He still used the research labs’ secure network, but Tony had tapped into that at his second day on the job.  
Experience had proved that with the personal device came the interesting part of the surveillance. Quickly Tony activated alerts for the other subjects, issued to go off when meeting some specifically flagged parameters, to be able to give Bruce most of his attention.

Other than research when the physicist wasn’t at his workplace, the private device was occasionally used for information gain in different areas. Bruce’s search history, which was naturally quickly deleted by him but not through enough to stop Tony the slightest, confirmed the agents suspicions about his mental state. Depression, most likely major, and a little side of anger issues. The latter ones interestingly enough seemed to concentrate against only Bruce himself. So all in all he was more a danger to himself than others, accordingly Tony didn’t saw a reason to inform the higher ups about it. 

Today’s lunch break was apparently filled once more with the physicist’s checking in on a self-help forum he frequented. By now also acquainted with the website, Tony could lean back and just follow his target reading over new entries that had been written over the last few days.  
Bruce rarely ever posted something himself, Tony only witnessed him answering to two entries, once offering advice about how he dealt with fits of agitation and another one just agreeing along with a statement about experiencing loss.

Apparently one of the new posts validated a third comment Tony hadn’t bet would ever happen. Different than before, Bruce wrote in a part of the forum that dealt with personal experience rather than the actual self-help part, and damn wasn’t that fascinating.   
After all, Tony’s knowledge of Bruce based off on a lot of guesses, good ones for sure, but guesses nevertheless. Things like this were one of the only possibilities to verify them.

Bruce needed a long time before he hit ‘submit’. In a rare case of consideration Tony didn’t watch the process of formulating, he didn’t need to spy into this most personal moment. Instead he minimised the window and went back to checking over the others.   
After deciding that nothing noteworthy was going on there and he still had a bit time to spare, Tony refilled his coffee cup and came back to the message that “Hulkedout” had successfully posted a thing.

It was a well known fact among the agents that Tony Stark didn’t cry. He quipped and grinned or got angry, but sadness wasn’t an emotion people should connect him with.  
But Bruce Banner really challenged this fact.  
Tony wasn’t sure if the offhand, clinical description the man gave about himself witnessing the murder of his own mother was making things better or worse.  
Maybe this wasn’t even the important part, maybe it was that despite the detached narrative one thing was really clear: that Bruce Banner believed himself responsible.

Even a few weeks later, Tony couldn’t forget about the surprisingly detailed post his normally quiet subject had made. Partly it was due to the increasingly worrying behaviour that showed through the hidden cameras and hacked microphones. All the little signs that Bruce’s situation was derailing from where it seemed to have settled made Tony immensely twitchy.   
Doing his job and just watching the physicist grew harder with every passing day so Tony was aware that eventually he would break the rules and do something.

Unfortunate side effect of being self-aware apart from a genius led to Tony being right a lot of the time, much to the annoyance of his colleagues. A month after the website entry that started it all, Tony was forced to reveal his existence for the first time in his career.

Would anyone of his colleagues be sitting with him this moment, they would’ve glanced at the screen and wouldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. They would see Bruce Banner carefully putting away his day’s equipment and saving his progress before calling it a night.  
But Tony saw more.

The physicist belonged without doubt to the more responsible people when it came to workplace safety, still there was a difference between storing stuff away over the night and making sure they were in their place until the next one needed them.   
What Tony was witnessing right now was the latter.

Over the last years Tony had learned a lot about Bruce’s research, had grown as familiar with it as the man himself, so he was reasonably sure that the work wasn’t over nor was this a ‘quitting because this is a dead end’ situation. Also, since Tony had a close eye on the correspondence Bruce received from his bosses he knew for sure that he hadn’t been shut down.  
This was a sign. 

Over the feed Tony watched his target shutting down the computers and collecting the few scattered papers on the desk. Looking so very much the same as usual, Bruce placed the notes onto the table, safely tucked into a neatly labels folder.  
Another thing that also never happened before a project was ended, folders meant finishing up the work. It was an unspoken rule for the man.  
This was the second sign.

Increasingly uncomfortable Tony shuffled in his seat. He had to do something before it was to late, who knew a what Bruce had planned in this gigantic head of his.  
Meanwhile Bruce shrugged off his rumpled lab coat and hung it after a minimal hesitation on it’s usual place. 

“Fuck it.”  
Not for a second moving his eyes from the man in the lab, Tony grabbed his phone from next to his freshly brewed coffee and typed in the combinations of numbers he had memorised for quite some time. 

“Hey Rhodey, hows it going?”   
Tony didn’t wait for an answer, didn’t even put on his headset correctly.  
“Could you watch my kids for me? Might have to head out and how do you adults say? Better safe than sorry?”

“Tones, what do you mean heading out? You’re surveillance! Don’t do anything-“  
“Stupid, yeah yeah, got it”, he answered absently while tapping a quick message on his phone.  
“Seriously Rhodey, I’ve got it.”

Apparently all those years of friendship worked in Tony’s favour and made his best friend and co-worker understand that he was being serious.  
“Okay, I’ll do it. But promise me you won’t get yourself killed. I don’t want to go through that again!”

Tony still chuckled when he ripped his headset down again and concentrated back on the screen. There he could see Bruce who stopped in his tracks to the sound of his phone beeping into the silence.   
Of course he would be surprised, there weren’t a lot of people who texted him in the first place, even less outside of working hours. Well, and maybe a bit was due the fact that Tony had remote controlled the phone setting from ‘mute’ to a quite loud setting.

In his defence, he needed to be noticed before Bruce left the lab. Out there it was way harder to have a close eye on him.  
The physicist scowled before searching his bag for the phone and checked the message he had received.

Tony could make out the very moment Bruce had skimmed over the short text. His body went visually rigid and his face pale. Immediately jumping to the right conclusions, Bruce slowly turned around, eyes roaming to find the cameras he now knew where there.  
Maybe Tony should’ve thought his text over a bit longer, he mused while rereading it for himself.

“I’m not watching this any longer. Meet me in the park behind the library in ten.”

While the agent was still debating whether or not he should’ve added a signature or at least his initials to the text to make it less ominous, Bruce stared to type an answer.

“How do I recognise you?”

He’ll be damned, Bruce managed to actually surprise him. He not only skipped the boring questions like “who are you” or “what do you want” in favour of the good ones. 

“Don’t worry about that. I’ll find you.”

Bruce pocketed his phone again and shouldered his bag appearing nothing than a bit more tense than usual.  
“Shit.”  
Tony glanced on his watch and realised that he really had to hurry if he wanted to make it in time himself. And he really couldn’t afford to be late, who knew what this idiot genius would do? Following through his original plan wasn’t off the table yet.

More stressed than was to his liking, Tony got out of his car and hastened over the campus to the library, hoping he didn’t look to suspicious. Who said Bruce wouldn’t flee as soon as he saw him? He might’ve been curious enough to meet the sender of a mysterious message, but how far did this interest go? Tony couldn’t count on that.

True to his word Bruce waited under a tree in the tiny park. His body was tense as if ready to flee as soon as he needed to, hands folded tightly around his bag strap.   
Forcing himself to be calm Tony strutted into view, immediately drawing the man’s eyes onto him.

Realising once more that he really should’ve planned this more through Tony resigned himself to improvising as he tended to do quite a lot. At least he was experienced in it.

“Doctor Bruce Banner, it’s an honour to meet you! I’ve been following your work for quite a while now and I’ve to say it’s incredible, especially-“  
“Why did you text me. Where did you get my number?”  
Tony let go of his broad smile and lowered his outstretched hand. Time to get to business then.

“A good question which deserves a long answer. But since I’m not sure if we have that much time I’ll give you the quick one: It’s my job to watch you, to make sure you don’t turn out to be a threat to society. Which, congrats, you don’t seem to be. To yourself on the other hand...”  
Bruce’s face was admirably blank, yet still lacking its usual tanned colour, but his eyes were wide and showed fear.

“You don’t drink, do you? Because I could go for one right now.”  
“I have to go.”  
Tony smiled again, less flashy and more honest than before.  
“Did you forget that I know exactly what you want to do?”

Exactly might’ve been an overstatement, but who was going to judge him for that?  
“Rest assured that I’ll not let you do it. Instead I’m offering an awesome evening with me-”   
Was that a smile? A quirk at the corner of his lips?   
“-where I give you the teasered long story? I promise it’s amazing, it involves me after all.”

It surely wasn’t the best approach to Bruce Banner and his complicated mental state, but it seemed to work nevertheless. And that was what counted, wasn’t it?

“It’s not as if I have anything to lose, is it?”  
The unspoken ‘and I have no choice either’ made Tony chuckle a bit.   
“I’m by car and incidentally I know a café that makes amazing coffee. It might be a good place to talk, what do you think?”

Bruce didn’t answer but that wasn’t necessary anyway. He just followed Tony back to his car in silence.


End file.
